The Art of Manliness - Social Skills as the Road to Character

00:00:00.000 Brett McKay here, and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.

00:00:11.420 If you've ever wanted to develop your character, you've probably thought about strengthening

00:00:15.180 virtues like courage, humility, and resolution. But my guests would say that practicing social

00:00:20.420 skills is another way of increasing your moral strength and the moral strength of society as a

00:00:25.300 whole. David Brooks is the author of numerous books, including his latest, How to Know a Person,

00:00:30.980 The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. Today on the show, David discusses why our

00:00:36.380 culture lost an emphasis on moral formation and why this loss has led to alienation and enemy.

00:00:42.000 We then talk about the role each of us can play in repairing this fabric by developing concrete

00:00:46.260 social skills, avenues to improve character that, unlike some virtues that are only called upon in

00:00:51.400 a crisis, you can practice every day. David shares insights on how we can get better at giving

00:00:56.480 people attention, asking good questions, and helping those who are going through a hard time.

00:01:01.420 We also discuss how understanding different personality types and life stages can allow

00:01:05.120 us to better understand other people. After the show's over, check out our show notes at

00:01:09.080 aom.is slash know a person. All right, David Brooks, welcome back to the show.

00:01:23.360 Oh, it's great to be back with you. So you got a new book out, How to Know a Person. And in this book,

00:01:28.160 you take a deep dive to explore how to be the kind of person that can see and understand others deeply.

00:01:36.460 What was the impetus behind this project?

00:01:40.100 Yeah, the impetus was basically we have a society that's rotting at the relational foundations. And so

00:01:45.240 there are all sorts of super bad statistics out there. 54% of Americans say that no one knows them

00:01:50.400 well. The number of people who say they have no close personal friends has gone up by four times in

00:01:55.820 the last two decades. We've seen a rise of depression, rise of suicide. 45% of teenagers say

00:02:01.420 they're persistently sad and hopeless. So there's just like this crisis of people feeling alone and

00:02:08.080 feeling alienated. And this book is meant to be an exocet missile at that problem. It's meant to

00:02:14.340 really introduce people to the skills they need so they can actually show up better for people.

00:02:19.320 And there's one skill that's the core skill of all those skills, which is the ability to understand

00:02:23.560 the people around you and make them feel seen, heard, and understood. And I wanted to get a lot

00:02:28.480 better at doing that for the people around me. And I hope other people want to get better too.

00:02:32.980 Yeah. So you argue in the book that there are two types of people in the world. There's

00:02:36.340 illuminators and then there's diminishers. Let's talk about the diminishers first, 0.99

00:02:40.260 because the illuminators, that's what the book's primarily about. What are diminishers like? What 1.00

00:02:44.580 are these kinds of people like? These are people who are not curious about you. You know,

00:02:49.160 I've noticed when I go to a party, sometimes I'll leave a party and I'll think, you know,

00:02:52.660 that whole time nobody asked me a question. And I found that about 30% of people are question askers

00:02:59.120 and the other 70% are perfectly fine. They're just not that curious about you. And so diminishers just 1.00

00:03:04.880 lack that curiosity. But then worse, they stereotype, they label, they ignore, they've got their own

00:03:12.620 egos in the way. So they're thinking about themselves and not about others. Or they're so stuck in their own

00:03:17.740 viewpoint. They can't get a sense of your own viewpoint.

00:03:21.560 Well, and you mentioned at the start, there's a lot of these statistics that we've been seeing

00:03:24.940 about how this, like the social fabric is fraying in the West and particularly in the United States,

00:03:30.680 increase in loneliness, increase in suicide, depression, et cetera. But then also you highlight

00:03:35.680 other statistics we've been seeing in the past, I don't know, five years, maybe. And you wrote about

00:03:40.420 this in the book, as well as in an article that you did for The Atlantic about just people behaving badly

00:03:46.620 in public. What are some of the statistics you've seen there?

00:03:50.580 Yeah, well, there's been a record rise in fights. We've obviously seen rising murder rates.

00:03:55.520 I was at a restaurant in New York and the owner told me that he has to kick somebody out of his

00:04:00.440 restaurant for entitled behavior about once a week. I'm friends with a woman who's a head nurse at a

00:04:06.060 hospital. And she says her main problem is keeping staff, that the patients have become so abusive,

00:04:11.840 a lot of nurses want to get out of the profession. And that's a problem caused by loneliness. When you 1.00

00:04:17.220 feel that society doesn't recognize you, it feels like an injustice. And so you tend to want to lash

00:04:23.100 out and you tend to want to attack. You feel under threat and you become vicious.

00:04:27.960 Yeah, I've heard this thrown around. Sometimes I roll my eyes at it, but I think it's true. That 1.00

00:04:31.220 idea that hurt people hurt people, it's probably what's going on.

00:04:34.480 I mean, you know, loneliness is this weird thing because you feel under threat. And so you begin to

00:04:40.160 get suspicious of the people around you and it cuts you off from the very thing you need most,

00:04:45.120 which is some, you know, friendship and social connection. And if you look at our politics,

00:04:49.620 I think you see the viciousness born out of a lot of people who feel

00:04:52.720 they've been disrespected on a regular basis.

00:04:56.020 Okay. So it's a vicious cycle going on. People are diminishers typically by nature because we're

00:05:00.720 self-centered. We were ego-centered, but that being a diminisher is causing other people to be

00:05:06.300 diminishers to you. And it just cycles and cycles downward.

00:05:10.260 Yeah, exactly. That's well put. I wish I had put it that way.

00:05:13.260 So in that, this chapter in this article in the Atlantic that I really enjoyed,

00:05:17.320 you make the case that one of the reasons there's been an uptick in diminisher behavior

00:05:21.660 is that we no longer have a shared moral education or shared idea of moral formation in the United

00:05:28.240 States. And you talk about there's three elements to moral formation. What are those three elements?

00:05:32.920 Yeah. So when you get morally educated, those three things are one, you learn ways to restrain

00:05:38.840 your natural selfishness. Two, you find an ideal, some goal or some ideal that you try to orient your

00:05:45.240 life around, something to give your life purpose, direction, and meaning. And then third, moral

00:05:51.280 formation is just teaching people the skills of how to be considerate to each other in the complex

00:05:56.280 circumstances of life, how to listen well to somebody, how to ask for and offer forgiveness,

00:06:01.380 how to argue well without breaking a relationship, how to have a party where everybody feels included.

00:06:08.220 And these are just basic social skills. You learn them the way you learn carpentry or tennis or

00:06:13.140 whatever. And some days it feels like we built a society where we haven't taught people how to do

00:06:19.180 the most important skills they need.

00:06:21.220 Yeah. You have a great line in that article that I liked about this sociality is a moral virtue and that

00:06:27.640 it's a skill. And you say this, you say, we learn most virtues the way we learn crafts through the

00:06:34.120 repetition of many small habits and practices, all within a coherent moral culture, a community of

00:06:40.480 common values whose members aspire to earn one another's respect. And that's very Aristotelian.

00:06:47.160 I guess so. I'm happy to follow Aristotle. That's high company. I might as well learn from the best.

00:06:51.680 And then in this article, you also talk about before World War II in the United States and in

00:06:57.680 other Western countries, people were very intentional about moral formation. What did it look like before

00:07:03.660 the war?

00:07:05.120 Yeah. Well, if you go all the way back to America's founders, our founders had a very realistic view

00:07:10.160 of human nature. They thought people are wonderful in many ways and cooperative and generous, but they're

00:07:16.100 also basically selfish and self-centered. And they had the thought that if we're going to make a

00:07:20.660 democracy out of these people, we've got to train them better. We've got to give them training on how

00:07:25.580 to be a good citizen, how to be a good neighbor, how to be a good friend. And so those morally

00:07:30.040 formative institutions came from all parts of the political spectrum and all parts of the religious

00:07:35.420 or non-religious spectrum. There were things like the Boy Scouts and the Girl Scouts in schools. Schools

00:07:40.760 used to think their main job was not to prepare you for the SAT or to get into college. Their main job was

00:07:46.600 to teach character. A headmaster at one school said, we try to raise students who will be acceptable at

00:07:53.240 a dance, invaluable at a shipwreck. They wanted to train young people to be strong in a crisis.

00:08:00.780 And so there were all these morally formative institutions of all varieties for the first 150

00:08:06.440 years of our country. And then around 1945, 46, a new mode of thinking came into the culture,

00:08:13.940 which was people are not basically sinful and self-centered. People are good. People are

00:08:18.720 wonderful. It's institutions and authority that's the problem. And so a lot of the institutions like

00:08:24.840 the Girl Scouts or the schools that used to be in the moral formation business, they got into the

00:08:30.300 self-actualization business that all you got to do is get in touch with yourself because you're good.

00:08:35.580 And so we stopped doing moral formation and you can see it. They have these things,

00:08:39.880 Google n-grams that measure which words are used in common conversation. And usage of words like

00:08:47.940 humility, honesty, courage, all the moral words, usage of those words went down like 60% over the

00:08:55.860 next few decades. We just stopped talking about how do we make people morally better?

00:09:00.660 What do you think caused that shift? I mean, it sounds like we went from a moral-based

00:09:04.540 vocabulary to a therapeutic vocabulary, a psychological. Like what caused that shift?

00:09:10.920 Yeah, I do think it was the basic sense that if you think human nature is good, that we're all

00:09:17.060 wonderful inside, you don't need to form it. You just need to let it loose. And so people were

00:09:21.720 encouraged to be self-indulgent. And then the second thing that happened is we went, I would say,

00:09:27.320 from a more moralistic culture, as you say, to a therapeutic culture. But then we just went to a

00:09:32.260 utilitarian culture. And so schools where I teach, which used to put creating, you know,

00:09:39.140 here's a phrase I heard from Ted Lasso, which is a perfect description of moral formation.

00:09:44.060 He was asked, what was his goals for his soccer team in his comedy series? And he said,

00:09:50.260 my goal for us this year is just to make the men on this team better versions of themselves on and

00:09:56.940 off the field. That's what moral formation is. Institutions that want to make the people in them

00:10:02.160 better versions of themselves on and off the field. And we dropped that goal in a lot of our

00:10:07.780 institutions, a lot of our schools. And now the goal is to get people into Harvard,

00:10:11.900 to prepare people for professional success. And I think it's just fundamentally wrong that,

00:10:17.520 you know, what's the most practical thing you can major in at a college, for example?

00:10:23.000 Well, it's the humanities, because the humanities teach you about other people.

00:10:26.100 And if you don't know about other people, you'll be miserable and you'll make them miserable.

00:10:29.280 So we're very short-sighted in thinking we should teach you how to code,

00:10:33.140 but we're not going to teach you how to understand human nature.

00:10:36.520 Yeah. I think people don't appreciate oftentimes how radical of a shift that is. You know, for

00:10:42.180 thousands of years, the purpose of education was to train the soul or order your desires in the

00:10:47.940 appropriate way. It wasn't just about making a buck.

00:10:51.340 Yeah. And now I think, you know, I have taught courses, my students call my courses therapy with

00:10:56.340 Brooks, but they're trying to be, you know, moral formation classes. Like one of them was about

00:11:02.040 making four big commitments. Most of us make a commitment to a philosophy or faith or to a family,

00:11:08.540 to a community, and to a vocation. How do you choose those commitments and how do you live up to

00:11:12.880 your commitments? And the course was very popular and these courses tend to be very popular,

00:11:18.480 but they're few and far between at our universities. And, you know, some of my colleagues would say,

00:11:23.780 I can't teach moral formation. I, I, my degree is in geology or my degree is in political science.

00:11:29.100 I have no idea what moral formation is or how you would go about it. And we've become so

00:11:34.600 professionalized that we've become demoralized. And my students, by the way, are, they're wonderful

00:11:40.800 kids, but they're perfectly aware that they're morally inarticulate. They've not been given the

00:11:46.140 tools to talk and think about this process of how do you become a better person?

00:11:51.880 And as we talked about earlier, because we don't have this moral education in our culture,

00:11:56.640 you know, this reinforcing web of social influences that help build character, this just leads to a

00:12:03.840 downward cycle of disconnection and alienation because people are untrustworthy. So there's less

00:12:11.840 social trust. And so, you know, we start retreating further into ourselves, but then when we do that,

00:12:18.080 we feel lonely and unrecognized. And so we lash out and that just creates more of the perception

00:12:23.340 that people can't be trusted. And so people disconnect from each other even more and just

00:12:28.140 goes on and on. And you say that a big part of recovering a moral tenor in our society is learning

00:12:35.760 to treat people better, to really see them and know them. So how do we start recovering that aspect

00:12:43.440 of what I think you'd call, you know, like the road to character?

00:12:46.740 The first step is just like the first encounter with a person. The first time you meet, we meet

00:12:52.160 each other. We're unconsciously asking ourselves certain questions. Am I a priority for this person?

00:12:59.000 Am I a person to them? And the answers to those questions will be communicated in the eyes before

00:13:05.240 any words come out of anybody's mouth. It's how do you gaze at someone? And that first burst of

00:13:11.400 attention is just super powerful. And so I tell the story in the book, I was out, I was in Waco,

00:13:16.800 Texas at a diner having breakfast with a woman named LaRue Dorsey, who was this 93 year old lady

00:13:22.440 who used to be a teacher. And she presented herself to me as a strict disciplinarian. And I was a little

00:13:29.320 intimidated by her. She said to me, you know, I love my students enough to discipline them.

00:13:34.140 And then into the diner walks a mutual friend of ours named Jimmy Durrell, who's a pastor.

00:13:38.140 He pastors the homeless. And he walks up to us and he grabs Mrs. Dorsey by the shoulders

00:13:44.260 and he shakes her way harder than he should shake a 93 year old. And he says to her, Mrs. Dorsey,

00:13:49.760 Mrs. Dorsey, you're the best. You're the best. I love you. I love you. And that stern disciplinarian I

00:13:55.260 had been talking to turned instantly into a bright eye shining nine year old girl. And that shows the 1.00

00:14:03.620 power of a gaze to turn somebody into a different version of themselves. And the most powerful point

00:14:10.000 I'm trying to make here is that Jimmy is a pastor. And so when he meets anybody, absolutely anybody,

00:14:16.300 he thinks he's met someone made in the image of God. He thinks he's looking into the face of God.

00:14:22.060 He's trying to see them with the eyes Jesus would use to see them eyes with compassion and love.

00:14:26.720 And you can be an atheist, a Christian, a Jew, a Muslim, Buddhist, whatever. The ability to approach

00:14:34.400 everybody you meet with that level of reverence and respect is an absolute precondition for knowing

00:14:40.140 them well. And that's what's sacred to me, the sacredness of each individual human being we

00:14:44.800 encounter. All right. So Jimmy, this pastor, he's an illuminator, right? He's the guided guy that when

00:14:49.780 you're around him, you just, you feel noticed, you feel seen, and you feel better being with that person.

00:14:57.080 Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I've, I have a friend named Mac. He's probably like 75.

00:15:01.980 You walk into a coffee shop with him. First meeting, everyone becomes friends with him

00:15:06.340 because he's so outward. Second meeting, they think he's their best friend. And the third meeting,

00:15:10.620 they ask him to officiate his wedding. And like, he's just like, he's, his attention is on you.

00:15:15.720 And it's just very powerful. I tell the story in a book of another illuminator and he worked at Bell

00:15:21.320 Labs. And they were, Bell Labs was this legendary research facility. And they noticed that some of

00:15:27.680 the researchers were way more innovative and productive than others. And they were asking, you

00:15:32.520 know, what makes some of these people so good and not better than the others? And it had nothing

00:15:36.860 to do with their IQ level, their education level. It turned out the most innovative researchers were

00:15:42.840 in the habit of having breakfast or lunch with this electrical engineer named Harry Nyquist.

00:15:48.800 And he would get inside their head. He'd pour his attention into them and help them think through

00:15:53.380 their problems and help them make progress. And so by getting into other people's heads,

00:15:59.160 Harry Nyquist was an illuminator. He made them better.

00:16:01.300 Have you had any illuminators in your life that have had a big impact on you?

00:16:05.680 Yeah, I would say that Guy Mack has had a big impact. You know, I, it's sometimes I would say

00:16:10.920 in my own life, when I felt really seen, sometimes it hasn't always been pleasant. I have a memory

00:16:15.800 going way back to 11th grade English. And I had made some smart alecky remark. And my teacher,

00:16:22.220 Mrs. Doosnap, barks at me in front of the whole class. David, you're being a smart ass. You're trying

00:16:27.260 to get by on glibness, stop it. And on the one hand, I was kind of humiliated because she called

00:16:32.180 me out in front of the whole class. But on the other hand, I thought, wow, she really knows me.

00:16:37.400 And she had named for me something which was a real problem, especially for me in high school,

00:16:42.900 just being smart ass. And it gave me something to work on. So even though it wasn't a sweet

00:16:48.300 experience, I did feel known by her.

00:16:50.300 Yeah, she saw you. And I really love this idea. And you weave it through throughout the entire book,

00:16:54.320 this idea that attention, paying attention to people is a moral act. And I think there's,

00:16:59.340 you know, you talk about Simone Weiss. That was her big philosophical idea. Attention is a moral act.

00:17:06.740 Yeah, there were a couple women from Jewish families in World War II who really emphasized

00:17:11.480 this. Simone Weiss said that attention is the ultimate act of generosity, paying attention to

00:17:17.260 one another. There was another woman, a Jewish woman in Amsterdam when the Nazis invaded.

00:17:22.380 And she just, she was sort of a mess when they invaded, very self-absorbed and self-centered.

00:17:28.200 But as the horror of the Holocaust became clear to everybody, she became more self-sacrificial.

00:17:35.360 And her biographer said of her, she grew by looking. She would study people, the bend of their neck,

00:17:41.320 the anxiety in their voice. And she refused to be calloused over by the brutality of the time she was

00:17:47.180 living in. And she went to work as a volunteer in one of the transit camps. And people described her

00:17:53.480 as transcendent, glowing, always on the lookout for others, always trying to be open-hearted toward

00:17:58.520 others, always trying to serve others. And they describe her as just this saintly figure. And what

00:18:04.720 really strikes me about that is you can be open-hearted even in brutal times. And when you're

00:18:11.880 just this defiant kind of humanist, especially brave when politics are rough, when you're stuck

00:18:18.780 in a region at war and you can not lose your humanity, that's a true accomplishment. And they

00:18:24.620 did it by just noticing the people around them. Okay. Let's talk about some things that you've

00:18:29.960 found to help you become more of an illuminator type. So it requires paying attention to others,

00:18:34.380 and that requires developing these concrete social skills that you've talked about.

00:18:38.640 And one of the skills of an illuminator is this idea that you need to have the ability to accompany

00:18:44.560 another person. What does it mean to accompany someone?

00:18:48.420 Yeah, well, most of life is just hanging out. We're not having deep conversations with each other.

00:18:52.640 But when you're accompanying, I obviously get it from music, where the pianist accompanies the singer.

00:18:59.480 The pianist is there paying attention to the singer, trying to make her shine. And it's sort of an

00:19:04.900 other-centered way of being. And so sometimes when we're accompanying each other, we're just playing,

00:19:10.360 like we're playing basketball. And play is an amazingly powerful way to get to know another

00:19:15.380 person because people tend to be at their most natural when they're playing basketball or playing

00:19:20.740 pickleball or just playing. Like when my son, my youngest son was an infant, he would wake up at

00:19:28.200 four in the morning. And I would have to wake up with him. And I would play with him for about five

00:19:33.560 hours before I went off to work. And when he was like 16 months, I remember he was playing on my

00:19:38.960 chest. And I remember thinking, you know, I know him best better than I've known anybody. And he

00:19:44.960 probably knows me best better than anybody has ever known me because I've been so open playing with

00:19:50.200 him. And we had never exchanged a word at that point because he couldn't talk. But through the looks

00:19:56.440 and interactions of play, you really can get to know someone very well. And then the other part

00:20:02.340 of accompaniment is just being present, just showing up for people in hard times. And one of the stories

00:20:09.100 I tell in the book is about a former student of mine who's lost her dad to pancreatic cancer.

00:20:15.900 And she had always discussed with him that he would miss her big life events. Then shortly after

00:20:22.500 college graduation, she was invited to be a bridesmaid at a friend's wedding. And she was

00:20:27.600 at the wedding and she was watching the interaction between the proud father and his daughter as she

00:20:32.320 was getting married. And of course she was moved, but also tender because of the loss of her own dad.

00:20:39.380 And during the reception, they had the father-daughter dance. And she said, you know, I think I'm just

00:20:43.660 going to step into the restroom, have a cry. And she comes out of the restroom and everybody at her 1.00

00:20:50.960 table and the adjacent table had gotten up and they were just standing there outside the bathroom.

00:20:57.100 And as she exited, each of them, nobody said anything. They each just gave her a hug

00:21:02.240 and went back to their tables. And she said, I didn't need them to linger around and offer false

00:21:08.760 grief. They gave me exactly what I wanted. And so that's a group of people who really knew what

00:21:15.820 she needed. They knew her and they saw her. We're going to take a quick break for a word

00:21:20.600 from our sponsors. And now back to the show. So being with someone, accompanying someone,

00:21:27.460 it's a passive active activity. You're along for the ride, but you're also engaged with it at the

00:21:34.300 same time. One way you can be engaged when you're accompanying someone is listening,

00:21:39.480 asking questions. And you do this. I love what you do in the books. You offer some concrete advice

00:21:43.420 on questions you can ask to get to know someone better. So what are some really great questions

00:21:49.580 you found to learn how to understand people better? Well, I think one thing I learned was we need to be

00:21:55.180 a little more ambitious in our questions. We need to ask big questions. And so kids are phenomenal at

00:22:00.960 asking questions. One of my favorite stories in the book concerns a friend of mine named Naomi Way,

00:22:05.620 who is teaching eighth grade boys how to ask questions so they could become student journalists.

00:22:12.000 And the first day of class, she sits in the front of the class and said, OK, ask me anything. I'll

00:22:15.520 answer it. So the first question from a boy was, are you married? The answer was no. And the second

00:22:21.480 question was, are you divorced? The answer was yes. Third question was, do you still love him?

00:22:25.700 And immediately she has a sharp intake of breath. And she says, yes. And they say, well,

00:22:32.220 does he know? Do your kids know? And so kids are just phenomenal at those blunt questions.

00:22:37.860 But as we get older, we get a little shy and we don't ask. And so, you know, I start by asking

00:22:43.500 people questions like, where are you from? I want to know where their childhood was. I've traveled a

00:22:47.620 lot in the country, so there's a good chance I've been to at least near where they're from.

00:22:51.860 Or where'd you get your name? That's something that gets people talking about their family or

00:22:57.780 maybe their ethnic heritage. And then as you really get to know someone, you can have playful

00:23:02.460 questions. Like I once was in a group and I asked, what's the most fun, unimportant thing about you?

00:23:09.500 And I learned that this academic, who I find very imposing, loves trashy reality TV. That's an

00:23:15.060 unimportant thing about him. That's kind of fun. And then as you really get to know someone,

00:23:18.860 the good questions lift them above their daily experience and get them to think about their own

00:23:24.860 life in a new way and explore it with you. So those are questions like, what crossroads are you

00:23:29.860 at? Most of us are in one life transition or another in life. So what crossroads are you at?

00:23:35.480 Or what's the commitment you've made that you no longer believe in? Or what forgiveness are you

00:23:41.040 withholding? And so those are questions that get people to step back and have to think about their

00:23:45.620 life in a new way. And they find it very rewarding to answer those questions because it allows them to

00:23:51.140 show themselves. And it's tremendously fun to be the one hearing them because every life is more

00:23:56.440 fantastic and amazing than you think. We only see 20% of each other. And if we get to see 50%,

00:24:02.120 we're astounded by the things that are going on down in each person.

00:24:06.820 Okay. So you don't want to start off these big questions right away with someone, a stranger,

00:24:10.220 like you don't discount the importance of small talk. They're friendly noises we make to

00:24:14.060 get comfortable with people. But you say you can ask those questions about your name,

00:24:18.020 where you're from, and then lead up to these big ones. Some of my favorite ones,

00:24:21.600 we talk about you had dinner with a political scientist and he was 80 years old. I love this

00:24:26.660 question he asked. He says, I'm 80. What should I do with the rest of my life?

00:24:30.640 Yeah, it was such a big question. But we had a great conversation around it. It's like, first,

00:24:36.440 what are his interests? But second, how should you age? How should you approach the final years of

00:24:42.020 energy before death? It was just like a set of big questions. And I will tell you, I've learned

00:24:47.100 this as a journalist, and I've learned it from talking to conversation experts. How often when

00:24:51.640 you ask a question, does somebody say, none of your damn business? The answer is never, almost never.

00:24:57.820 People are dying to tell their story. For this book, I interviewed a guy named Dan McAdams,

00:25:03.000 who works at Northwestern, and he studies how people tell their life story. And he calls people in,

00:25:08.600 asks them to describe their high points of life, the low points, the turning points.

00:25:13.740 And then after a few hours, he says, thank you. And he hands them a check to compensate them for

00:25:18.900 their time. A lot of the people push back the check and say, I don't want to take money for this.

00:25:23.800 This has been one of the best afternoons of my life. No one has ever asked me these questions.

00:25:27.780 And so people are just dying to be asked.

00:25:31.320 Yeah. And you're helping that person. What these questions do is you're helping these people

00:25:35.160 craft the story of their life. And they've never probably been asked to tell their story.

00:25:40.780 And with these questions, you're allowing them to do that.

00:25:43.780 Yeah. And I guess I'd say that most people don't sit down and say, what's the story of my life? It's

00:25:47.420 only when we're asked that we have to come up with it. And as we're listening to the stories,

00:25:51.760 you want to listen first, what's the role the person puts themselves? How do they see themselves?

00:25:56.460 I guess for me, I'd be the teacher. That's the role I assign myself in life. And other people

00:26:03.440 can be the healer. Other people are the reconciler. Other people are builders. And there's usually a

00:26:09.960 social role we give ourselves. And then the other thing that's interesting to listen for in listening

00:26:14.440 to people's stories, what's the plot here? People pick up a size and shape of a plot from the culture

00:26:21.320 around. And so some people may tell their life story as a rags to riches story. I started out the

00:26:26.400 bottom. I made it to the top. Some people as an overcoming the monster story. I had an abusive

00:26:32.420 parent or I had to struggle with alcohol and I had to overcome the monster. And a lot of people,

00:26:37.260 and I think I'm in this camp, tell redemption stories that I was cruising along in life.

00:26:43.680 Something bad happened. I came back better. That's redemption. That's a redemption story.

00:26:49.100 And so when you hear the plot of some of these stories, you learn a lot about them by what plot

00:26:55.020 they assign to their lives. So this idea of paying attention to people, ask good questions as part of

00:27:01.280 it, but then you have to listen. And you have to listen in a way so the person sees that you're

00:27:06.060 actually listening. Anything that you've come across that has helped you become a better listener?

00:27:09.580 Yeah, I share a whole bunch of tips on how to be a better conversationalist. One of them is treat

00:27:16.580 attention as an on-off switch, not a dimmer. Make it 100% paying attention, not 60%. Another is

00:27:23.380 be a loud listener. You should be listening so actively, you burn calories. And so I have a buddy

00:27:29.880 named Andy Crouch who's, when you're talking to him, he's like a congregation in one of those

00:27:35.160 Pentecostal churches. He's going, uh-huh. Yep. Yep. Preach. Amen. Amen. Amen. I just love talking

00:27:40.920 to that guy. Another is don't fear the pause. If I say something in our conversation, at what point

00:27:48.960 do you stop listening so you can think of what you're going to say? We miss like 40% of each

00:27:53.960 other's comments because we shift to, well, what am I going to say to this? And so if I let you talk out

00:27:58.860 the whole thing you want to say, then I pause for a couple seconds. Maybe I hold up my hand to show

00:28:04.100 that I'm really digesting what you just said. And then I answer. And that's a way of really hearing

00:28:08.880 what you're saying and really honoring what you're saying. You also talk about how you can help someone

00:28:13.500 who's going through a hard time. I think this is an area where people have friends and family members

00:28:19.360 who are going through a hard time. It could be job loss, a loved one died, it could be depression,

00:28:25.240 alcoholism. And they see these people suffering, but they don't know what to do. They want to help

00:28:30.980 and be with that person, but they don't know what to do. So they just don't do anything,

00:28:35.120 which is probably the worst thing you could do. And I think the reason why people don't know is

00:28:39.500 going back to what we were talking about earlier, you're just not taught this stuff anymore. So what

00:28:44.280 can people do to help someone going through a hard time? Yeah, well, it's two different kinds of hard

00:28:49.500 times. First is depression. As I describe in the book, one of my oldest friends got hit with a real

00:28:55.000 severe case of depression. And I did it wrong for the first year or two. The first, I would try to

00:29:03.480 offer him ideas on what he could do to get out of depression. Like, why don't you go to Vietnam and

00:29:08.840 help people who are poor? That'll be rewarding. You've done it before. You found it so rewarding.

00:29:13.580 Why don't you do that again? And I learned that if you're trying to offer somebody who's depressed

00:29:17.980 ideas about how to get out of depression, you're really, all you're doing is saying,

00:29:22.400 you just don't get it. Because it's not ideas they're lacking when they're depressed.

00:29:27.600 The second mistake I made was positive reframing, trying to remind my friend of all the good things

00:29:33.160 he had in his life, his great career, his great wife, his great kids. And that positive reframing

00:29:38.140 just makes things worse too. Because it's like telling the person that he's not enjoying the

00:29:42.720 things he should palpably be enjoying. And so he makes him feel worse. And I learned in this sort of

00:29:48.460 thing, all you can do is show, I'm still here. I'm not going away. I'll never go away. This is

00:29:54.840 unconditional. I'm sticking around as your friend. And then you can say, listen, I admire you for your

00:30:00.900 strength because you're still here. And you have faced a lot of pain, but you're still here. And I

00:30:07.080 think those are some of the things you can say to someone who's depressed. For someone who's suffering

00:30:11.000 grief, I think the best thing, you know, I have a friend who lost a daughter to an accident in

00:30:17.800 Afghanistan, and then nearly lost another daughter to a bike accident in DC. And she told me, you know,

00:30:24.920 sometimes people don't know if they should mention Anna, the daughter who died, because that might be

00:30:29.540 reminding me of a bad subject. But they should know that Anna is always on my mind. And therefore, if you

00:30:35.900 mention her, you give me the chance to talk about her if I want to, or to not talk about her if I

00:30:41.500 don't, but you're giving me the chance. And then she said to me, as she was nursing her younger daughter

00:30:46.840 back to health, she said, do you want to know what the best thing anybody ever did for us in this

00:30:51.300 period of recuperation? Somebody went to the bathroom in our house on a visit and noticed we

00:30:57.420 didn't have a shower mat in the shower. And so they went out to Target, they bought a shower mat,

00:31:02.700 they put it in the shower, and they didn't say anything, they just did it. And she said,

00:31:07.040 that was the kind of practical help that just helped me exactly where I needed help,

00:31:12.260 just on the daily practicalities of life as my daughter and I are going through this hard time.

00:31:17.840 Yeah, I think that's one of the benefits going back to, you know, this idea we had a community

00:31:23.340 of moral formation helped you learn how to do these things. Like churches, I think it's one of the

00:31:28.540 benefits of churches is that you had these rituals you'd go through when someone passed away. So in

00:31:34.240 my church, if someone dies, the members of the church, they're going to cook the family lots of

00:31:38.220 dinners and casseroles. They don't have to worry about that. They're going to put on the funeral

00:31:41.440 for the person. There's like these things you just do that people have done for generations that you

00:31:45.740 just, you do over and over again, no matter what. And now when people are going to church less,

00:31:51.200 they don't have those built-in rituals. So they don't, they have a harder time figuring out,

00:31:54.700 well, what should I do to help this person out? Yeah, no, I agree completely. Like in the Jewish 1.00

00:31:58.760 tradition, it's called sitting shiva. And so if you lose a husband, the obvious form of therapy is

00:32:05.220 not, well, you need to throw a party every night for the next week. But that's sort of what it can

00:32:10.120 be like in the Jewish community where the person who's grieving has a lot to do. They got to clean 1.00

00:32:15.400 up the house. They got to arrange the food and, and they have people around them every night for a week.

00:32:20.600 And it's actually a brilliant form of therapy because it, it surrounds you with community

00:32:25.180 and it surrounds you with a lot of casseroles and stuff like that. But it gives you something to do

00:32:30.640 and it gives you a way to process what you're going through. And people now, if we don't go to church or

00:32:36.900 synagogue or mosque, we may have friends, but we're not enmeshed in the institutions that leap up

00:32:41.740 during hard times. And so just as you say, a church or a synagogue or a mosque, that community,

00:32:47.280 they know exactly what to do when there's grief, your loose collection of friends are going to be

00:32:51.980 a lot less reliable. Okay. So helping someone going through a hard time, whether it's depression

00:32:56.820 or grief, I think the big takeaway there is just be with them, accompany them. And maybe you don't

00:33:01.280 have to say anything, just be there with them and find ways you can help them. That's it. And

00:33:06.720 there don't worry about saying the wrong thing. I think a lot of people, that's another thing they

00:33:11.440 freak out about. They're going to say the wrong thing. I think people will just appreciate that

00:33:15.960 you are there with them. Yeah. And I learned that there are two sorts of people in a crisis.

00:33:21.240 They're firemen and builders. And there are some people who show up right at the moment when you've

00:33:26.300 lost a spouse or a kid or whatever, and they're there in the beginning. And then there's another

00:33:31.660 group of people who they show up later on, but they're there for the long-term process,

00:33:37.900 which you have to go through to rebuild your mind, rebuild the models of your mind. So you

00:33:42.260 can now cope with what life is like without that person. And these tend to be two different

00:33:47.720 sorts of people. And the other thing that a lot of people I've heard say is that when you lose,

00:33:53.880 when you say you lose a kid, some of the people you think are going to show up for you, who you're

00:33:58.640 really close to, do not show up for you. And some of the people you never expected, they travel across

00:34:04.600 the country and they show up. And it's, it goes back to that illuminator, diminisher dualism that

00:34:10.400 some people are just show or uppers and they may not be your best friend, but when they hear about

00:34:15.720 a crisis, suddenly they're there and they've parked in front of your house and they're, they're,

00:34:20.660 they're red, ready to do any, whatever you want them to do. And that's a good trait to be a show or

00:34:25.460 upper. Yeah. That idea of the distinction between firemen and builders. We, I saw this firsthand,

00:34:31.060 my wife and I, one of our good, very good friends, he lost his wife in a tragic skiing accident

00:34:37.060 several years ago. So he was a widower, had five kids at the time. They're all under the age of

00:34:41.820 11, I think. And so right away, you know, people circled the wagons around him and helped him out.

00:34:47.960 But then he talked about after a while, people just stopped because people have their lives to live.

00:34:52.740 He understood it, but my wife and I made it a priority just to, to stay connected with him,

00:34:58.720 even though he's, you know, he lives in another state because yeah, your life, you have to rebuild the

00:35:03.560 life completely after that. And you need other people to help you during that process.

00:35:09.140 Yeah. I mean, you even need to rebuild your mind because your mind is, we understand reality by

00:35:14.700 building models of reality. And so in that guy's models, his wife was right there. And if he had

00:35:20.780 something funny to share, he would, she would be there. And suddenly she's not there anymore.

00:35:25.960 And sort of the fibers of his mind are reaching out for her, even though she's not there. And it takes

00:35:31.100 like years for the models to get modernized. So she's there as a memory, but not as a living

00:35:38.280 presence. Okay. So we talked about paying attention and you can do that just by being

00:35:42.520 with someone, asking good questions, really listening. You also talk about, you have this

00:35:47.180 chapter on personality and understanding the science of personality. How can understanding

00:35:51.680 personality help you relate better with others? Well, to know other people, you have to know about

00:35:58.080 human nature. You know, just as a geologist can look at a rock face and see more than an amateur,

00:36:04.000 or just as a sommelier can taste more at a wine, it really helps to have domain knowledge about human

00:36:09.860 beings. And one of the things, you know, the easiest to spot thing is the personality type.

00:36:15.820 And our conversation of personality types is very screwed up in this country. I sometimes ask groups of

00:36:21.640 people, how many of you know about Myers-Briggs? And almost every hand of the room goes up. People

00:36:27.660 know about Myers-Briggs. And then I say, how many of you know about the big five personality traits?

00:36:33.000 And maybe 10 or 20% know. And what's wrong with that is that Myers-Briggs has no basis in

00:36:38.440 scientific research. You take the test multiple times, you get multiple diagnoses of who you are.

00:36:45.260 It is not predictive of how anybody's going to do in a job or in a marriage or anywhere else.

00:36:49.440 And the categories are wrong in Myers-Briggs. Like it says that some people are thinking people and

00:36:53.860 some people are feeling people. But in fact, people who are good at thinking are also good

00:36:57.520 at feeling. So it gets human nature wrong. But there's masses of research in what's known as

00:37:03.960 the big five personality traits. And those are extroversion, which is drawn to positive emotions,

00:37:10.940 conscientiousness, high impulse control, agreeableness, your ability to like other people,

00:37:16.640 openness to new experience, whether you're adventurous or not. And then neuroticism. Do

00:37:22.400 you respond to negative emotions? And if I know that you're high in conscientiousness, I'm probably

00:37:27.120 going to expect you to be disciplined and persevering and organized. I'm going to be expecting you're

00:37:32.200 going to be doing pretty well at school and probably pretty well in a company because you really have a lot

00:37:36.800 of self-control. On the other hand, if my kid is high in neuroticism, which is very sensitive to

00:37:43.400 negative emotions like fear or anger, then my kid is going to hear my correction, which I think is a

00:37:50.040 gentle correction. He's going to hear that as shouting. And so I need to parent a kid who's

00:37:56.300 neurotic in a way that is a little gentler. And so he doesn't feel perpetually under assault. So it's

00:38:02.700 super important that I know his personality traits. And we can do that mostly by observing each other.

00:38:08.120 If we hang around each other, we know who's extroverted or not. We know who's agreeable or

00:38:13.000 not. And it just helps you see what kind of person that is, if you can attach sort of a tendency of

00:38:20.280 personality to them.

00:38:21.640 All right. It'll help you relate better to them. You also have this chapter on life stages. And this

00:38:27.080 is really interesting because as I was reading this book, I was writing an article about life stages,

00:38:32.020 paradigms for different cultures and different times in human history.

00:38:34.760 Tell us about this. How can understanding life stages or life cycles help us be able to

00:38:41.200 understand and relate better to people?

00:38:43.840 Yeah. So we have different tasks that we go through in life and they happen at different times. And

00:38:49.640 our minds are reshaped so we can complete that life task. So when you're a boy or a girl,

00:38:55.780 your primary life task is to show you can compete and you can be effective. And so at school,

00:39:01.840 there's a lot of competitive games as people are competing to show, yes, I can be effective

00:39:06.220 and at school. And so you're kind of self-absorbed as a kid and you're just trying to show you can do

00:39:12.400 things. And then you get to adolescence and you're in a more interpersonal phase. You're trying to find

00:39:18.100 out who you are and that's shaped by what other people say about you. So you become, your main job

00:39:24.860 there is to make friends and be popular among friends. And so in that first stage of that first

00:39:30.700 task of life, you're going to be a little self-centered and self-enclosed. And then the

00:39:35.660 next task in adolescence, you're going to be super sensitive to social slights. And so that's just a

00:39:41.940 very different mentality. So if you can see what task somebody's in the middle of, you'll have a good

00:39:47.020 deal of idea of how their mind works. And so for example, I'm kind of caught between two life tasks.

00:39:53.520 The one task, which is what most middle-aged people are in the middle of, is career consolidation.

00:39:59.740 How do I become a success at work? But then you hit a certain age and that becomes a little

00:40:04.620 unsatisfying and you move on to the next task, which is generativity. How do I give back?

00:40:10.520 And so I'm in this weird transition moment where I hope I'm trying to give back to society,

00:40:15.940 but I still have the normal anxieties of anybody in career. And so like a couple of years ago,

00:40:20.720 I wrote a book about how to be a good member of community, how to be a generous human being.

00:40:25.560 And I wrote this noble book about how you shouldn't care about career success.

00:40:29.480 And yet when the book came out, I was like looking at my Amazon ranking every hour. And so

00:40:33.400 I clearly had not made the transition. I was still obsessed with career. And I sort of think I'm in

00:40:38.500 the middle of that. So if you can ask yourself or ask the other person, what's your main life task

00:40:44.260 right now, you'll be able to learn a lot about how they see the world, how they structure their

00:40:49.020 days, how they prioritize their desires. Yeah. One of the ideas from the road to character that

00:40:54.620 I think about a lot that you wrote about was this idea of two atoms. So we're talking about Adam,

00:40:59.160 like the first human, and there's Adam one and Adam two. And this comes from the Jewish tradition

00:41:04.180 that there's these two types of atoms. And Adam one is our ambitious career oriented self.

00:41:08.940 And then Adam two is when we shift to generativity, like helping other people thinking of we.

00:41:14.900 And I've seen that in my own life. And I also see it in the lives of, you know,

00:41:18.880 teenage boys that I mentor. I know when I interact with my, these teenage boys at church and in flag

00:41:24.100 football, like they're totally, they're getting into Adam one phase. Like they, what they want to

00:41:28.420 know is like, how can they be successful? How can they get stronger? How can they get better?

00:41:32.860 What can they do to attract members of the opposite sex? That's their focus. And so like, 1.00

00:41:37.180 I understand that there's nothing wrong with that. That's the phase of life that they're in.

00:41:41.080 They're trying to build a life for themselves. And so I try to orient a lot of the things I talk

00:41:45.640 about towards that. Yeah. I think understanding those life stages can help you connect better

00:41:49.900 and understand people better. Yeah. And if some people, like if you have somebody who's in the

00:41:54.480 interpersonal phase and she marries someone who's still in that first stage of trying to prove

00:42:00.480 themselves, she's going to ask him to give more emotional connection than he's capable of giving.

00:42:07.180 Cause he, his mind just hasn't entered the task where a deep introspection or deep connection

00:42:13.120 are a priority for him. And so he doesn't do it. And so that's going to be a, if you're at these

00:42:18.760 different life tasks, you're going to have different mentalities. And another transition

00:42:23.940 is between the generative state, which is usually when you're in your sixties or your seventies,

00:42:28.580 and you're not really driven by status as much. You just want to contribute. But then there's the

00:42:34.800 next stage, which is the final stage of life, which Eric Erickson, the psychologist said is about

00:42:39.800 integrity or despair. And that final phase is when you piece together what your life meant,

00:42:46.500 can you look back on it with relatively few regrets, understanding how you affected the world. And if

00:42:51.840 you can do that, you've achieved integrity. Erickson says, and if you can't do that, you achieve

00:42:56.620 despair. And so I'm struck by, especially among seniors, how much they want to learn that you'd think

00:43:03.220 their curiosity would be down, but it's not at all. Seniors really want to learn. I think they want

00:43:07.540 to figure out where they fit into the world and what they can leave behind to the world.

00:43:12.700 So I love about the book, you weave in these big ideas along with these concrete practical things.

00:43:16.480 Let's end with a concrete practical thing. Like what's one thing that you think people can start

00:43:20.280 doing today to become more of this illuminator type? Yeah, I would say one of them would just be like,

00:43:26.300 be a little more aggressive on the next time you're on a train or in a coffee shop, like start a

00:43:30.380 conversation with somebody. And, you know, we underestimate how much we'll enjoy that. We

00:43:36.160 underestimate how much people will want to get deep. And so just be a little more, I have a

00:43:41.500 friend who says, I practice aggressive friendship. Be the person on the train who starts the conversation.

00:43:46.280 And if they cut you off, fine, but the odds are they will love to have this conversation and they'll

00:43:50.920 love to make it fun. Then there are other little practical things. Like one of them is just

00:43:55.240 when thanking a, when writing a thank you note, the temptation is to write about yourself.

00:44:00.380 Here's how I am going to use what you gave me. But the nicer thing is to write about the other

00:44:05.580 person's intentions. Thank you for taking the time to think about who I am and buying me this perfect

00:44:11.420 gift makes me feel seen by you. And so that's the sort of practical thing you can do. And then I will

00:44:18.280 tell parents, if your kid's in school, the most practical thing they can do is major in the humanities,

00:44:25.080 and learn about people. And then the most practical thing you can do is to lead with respect,

00:44:32.360 lead with a sense of, I want to get to know you. And you'll find even in the little encounters at

00:44:38.080 the cash register or the big encounters with family and friends, life is just a little happier.

00:44:43.400 I love that. Well, David, where can people go to learn more about the book and your work?

00:44:47.140 Well, they can buy their book from Amazon or wherever they buy their books. They can also,

00:44:52.720 my writing generally appears in the New York Times and in the Atlantic magazine. So if

00:44:58.080 people want to Google me and they can find more writing than is humanly possible.

00:45:03.780 Fantastic. Well, David Brooks, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.

00:45:06.560 Oh, it's always great to talk with you. Thank you for having me on.

00:45:09.900 My guest today was David Brooks. He's the author of the book, How to Know a Person. It's available on

00:45:13.460 amazon.com and bookstores everywhere. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash knowaperson,

00:45:17.820 where you find links to resources, where you delve deeper into this topic.

00:45:27.820 Well, that wraps up another edition of the AOM podcast. Make sure to check out our website at

00:45:31.920 artofmanliness.com, where you find our podcast archives, as well as thousands of articles that

00:45:35.940 we've written over the years about pretty much anything you think of. And if you haven't done

00:45:39.320 so already, I'd appreciate it if you take one minute to give us a review on off a podcast or

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00:45:46.580 show with a friend or family member who would think we get something out of it. As always,

00:45:50.260 thank you for the continued support. And until next time, it's Brett McKay. Reminding you to

00:45:53.720 listen to AOM podcast would put what you've heard into action.

The Art of Manliness - October 25, 2023

Social Skills as the Road to Character

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